ABSTRACT
Rome, taken and re-taken five times, was only the shadow of herself. Under Theodoric she still had a population of several hundred thousand inhabitants and was the finest town in the West. After the Gothic wars we find her deprived of nine-tenths of her population. Many buildings had per ished in the flames ; not only the temples but the Imperial palaces on the Palatine were falling in ruins, through want of upkeep. The aqueducts had been cut and in the neigh bourhood of Rome the “ Roman Campagna ” finally took on the look of poignant melancholy which it has kept to our own times.4
